From 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on March 3, Torontonians in Ward 11 of the Toronto District School Board can cast their votes for a board trustee seat, which opened up after Rachel Chernos Lin was elected in November to the Toronto City Council.
The city’s Jewish community will pay close attention to that race, which will come two weeks after the public district’s board voted 13-5, 11.5 hours into 13 hours of meetings held on Feb. 12 and 13, to accept a report on “affirming Jewish identities and addressing antisemitism and the combating hate and racism strategy.”
During the marathon meetings, “every single libel was put out on display,” Tamara Gottlieb, co-founder of the Jewish Educators and Families Association, told JNS. “The libel of colonialism, of ethnic cleansing, of apartheid and genocide, all given a forum.”
“It’s an absolute outrage that the TDSB would hold a meeting to discuss antisemitism, only to subject the victims to more libels and hate,” Gottlieb added.
Jew-hatred has risen in the Toronto public school system since Oct. 7, although it is a matter of dispute how much.
Per the district, Jew-hatred was up five percentage points—from 10% to 15%—as a part of all hate recorded in the system from September to December 2023. JEFA data indicates that there were 211 instances of Jew-hatred in the Toronto school district in the 2022-23 school year and that in the half year after Oct. 7, 2023, the number tripled, per Gottlieb.
Among the Jew-hatred that a boy has experienced as a public school student, he told Toronto school board trustees earlier this month, are a Hitler salute, being told “you should have been gassed with your ancestors, Jew” and school staffers displaying pro-Hamas messages, the Toronto Sun reported.
In September, Toronto public school students were encouraged on a field trip, unbeknown to their parents, to “chant anti-Israel slogans such as ‘from Turtle Island to Palestine, occupation is a crime,’” per the Fraser Institute, a libertarian think tank. In 2021, district teachers received materials that promoted terror, according to the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
Three of 10 candidates for the open trustee seat—Stacey Cline, Diana Goldie and Adam Golding—support the Jewish community in their platforms and online statements.
“Jews are overlooked with concerns about their feeling of safety,” Cline, who taught for 10 years and has a child in the public school district, told JNS. “This needs to be taken seriously.”
“I believe that geopolitics has to be removed from the classroom,” she said.
‘I don’t think it’s helping the students’
Last September, the school board voted to adopt policies on anti-Palestinian racism, although Gottlieb told JNS that her organization learned from a freedom of information request that there were no reported instances of such hatred within the Toronto school system.
The second candidate who has supported Jews, Goldie, also a teacher by profession, told JNS that the Toronto school district, in which three of her children have studied, spends “far too much money” on diversity, equity and inclusion.
“I don’t think it’s helping the students at all,” added Goldie, who has served on city committees addressing safety at multiple schools.
The spike in Jew-hatred in the school system is “alarming,” and Goldie wants to see stricter policies in place that bar teachers from bringing politics into the classroom.
“I don’t think they’re enforcing their own regulations,” she told JNS. “They’ve got to make the consequences consistent.”
It’s a “no-brainer” to her that school policy shouldn’t include anti-Palestinian racism. “I’ve heard quite a few parents saying they’ve taken their kids out of the TDSB because they aren’t feeling safe in the school community,” she said.
Golding, the third candidate who has articulated support for Jews, is a director at a coding program for students. He told JNS that “antisemitism is a scourge that I have considered my enemy my entire life.”
“I have many Jewish family members and will not tolerate a Toronto District School Board in which students are afraid to display a Star of David or any symbol, or where they are afraid to identify as Jewish,” he told JNS that he wrote to a concerned parent.
“Obviously, bringing students to a protest is a no-no, as they are not yet equipped to give truly informed consent,” he added, of the September field trip. “When I teach computer science at a synagogue, not a word of politics escapes my mouth or the teachers I train to help me.”
Gottlieb, of JEFA, told JNS that both Jews and non-Jews see the “serious problem in our public schools, most particularly in the TDSB.”
In the past, students who made hateful comments or took hateful actions were disciplined and even suspended at times.
“We no longer see that. Suspension rates, in fact, are at an all-time low,” she told JNS. “So there’s certainly an absence of consequences for students, who engage in hateful behavior, and that can’t be ignored.”
“None of us should be surprised that social cohesion is just completely being abandoned, when all students are hearing about is how one group is more oppressed than the other,” she added. “Voters in this upcoming election need to give some serious thoughts as to whether or not they want their kids in school for an education or for indoctrination.”